Peaches (Canada) talks about upcoming Groovin’ The Moo festival and creative avenues

Coming to Australia next month, Canadian electronic artist, Peaches, will be heading our way for Groovin’ The Moo festival to dazzle audiences with her delightful presence on stage. After putting her heart and soul into writing lyrics for her new album, she takes a bit of a breather in Berlin, mentally preparing herself for the upcoming busy schedule in the next few months.

“I’m in Berlin at the moment. Australia will be the first shows I’ll do. I spent the winter in LA writing the new album and I’m here for two and a half weeks, running around and keeping stuff together, see people and do whatever I can before the onslaught begins [laughs].”

Peaches was originally a music and drama teacher and even though she didn’t kick off her music career until later, she was a creative professional in the making. Having a passion for both theatre and music, she decided to combine both passions as a teacher but in the end, she found herself wanting to do more creatively. In 2012, she released a semi-biographical concert film called Peaches Does Herself and it uncovered much more of her life than just being a musician per se; she was an entertainer and performer and it opened up many creative avenues that the musician still had left to explore.

“Growing up, I didn’t have any sort of musical guide but I was very interested in singing at the time. I had no idea that if you didn’t have a musical sound wave, it would be very foreign to me. I was more interested in working with theatre because I would watch musicals on TV. I had no idea what the world of music would bring so I ended up in theatre school for university as opposed to being a rockstar.

“When I got out, I needed a job so I was working in a daycare which incidentally was something I found unchallenging. I found teaching very unchallenging and exhausting and that’s why I started to play the guitar for the kids and I developed a program which lead me into becoming a drama and music teacher.”

For Peaches, being a teacher wasn’t something that was a routine-based job as she realised herself that she was an inventor of music which initially started her exploration in all different kinds of music genres.

“It was this program that turned into a day job for ten years and at the same time, I was developing my own music at night. From that moment, I made the realisation that I was making music the whole time while I was teaching during the day and I did a lot of experimentation. From acoustic music to punk music and then to electronics – I could do it all myself; It was sort of an evolution.”

Teaching wasn’t something she felt like was inhibiting her potential as an artist because it was a job that expressed her creativity in a different way. Peaches explains, “I wasn’t thinking that at all and it didn’t matter to me. I had a day job where I was being creative which is like a seed in itself and a whole world where I was making money not on my own terms.”

Children were her interactive audience at the start which made it interesting for her to learn how to engage with an audience. Teaching children was one thing but performing to them was another.

“Kids are quite an unapologetic audience; they’re kind of like a punk audience and then they jump on you and pull on your hair, so I think I learnt a lot about how to interact with an audience from that experience.”

With her songs making appearances in TV shows such as 30 RockSouth Park and The L Word, the musician was thoroughly impressed on the way each of her songs were utilized. She was amused and humbled by how her music was being portrayed in the popular culture world.

“It’s funny how it’s always used. It’s always used in some sort of controversial way which is really fun. On South Park, they used one of my songs [“Fuck the Pain Away”] ,and one of the characters who’s a cop, pretended to be a stripper in regards to uncovering prostitution at a frat house and in an effort, they used my music where the cop jumps right out of the cake while he acts as a stripper – it just blows me away that my music can be used in these moments on TV.”

With gender identity being a recurring theme in her music, through her strong-minded statement, all she wanted was people to be comfortable in their own skin and that’s what mattered to her in the end.

“My perspective has always been to let people be who they are. No matter how much masculinity to femininity they have within themselves because we all have a different balance of that and we shouldn’t be patronised for it, you know. We’re human and we should be able to celebrate – whatever way we need to be.”

Doing her first tour in Australia this year, Peaches explained her excitement to perform on stage to fans down under. She also described the diversity of fans when it came to her live shows. With visuals coming from films such as GreaseTron and Phantom of The Paradise, she’s known to use them as inspiration for her visionary setlist.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be great because there’s places in Australia I’ve never been before. I’m just very interactive and fun and I think you’ll like it. My fans are really open-minded and range from all different kinds of artsy people to older people or younger people and then people who are curious about their sexuality.”

As an artist, Peaches had a solid reflection to describe her music journey and it’s clear that she’s proud to be where she is right now.

“For me, it’s all about trusting yourself and going through what you really believe and wanna do and from there, it’ll just keep evolving. If it’s something you’re passionate and curious about, it’ll take you to places where you never knew were possible and you’ll be really happy that you ended up there.”

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Australian Tour Dates:

Groovin’ the Moo:
Saturday 25 April 2015 – Oakbank Racecourse, Oakbank, SA
Sunday 26 April 2015 – Hay Park, Bunbury, WA
Saturday 02 May 2015 – Prince of Wales Showgrounds, Bendigo, VIC
Sunday 03 May 2015 – University Of Canberra, Canberra, ACT
Saturday 09 May 2015 – Maitland Showground, Maitland, NSW, Australia

Other:
Wednesday 29 April 2015 – The Bakery, Perth, WA
Friday 01 May 2015 – The Hi-Fi, Melbourne, VIC
Friday 08 May 2015 – The Hi-Fi, Sydney, NSW

For more info, click here: http://peachesrocks.com/category/news/

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